Religion without faith may seem about as pointless as non-alcoholic beer, but Alain de Botton's latest project to build a series of secular temples suggests a new mood in the angry standoff between belief and non-belief. Not everyone will agree, of course. Richard Dawkins was characteristically trenchant: "Atheists don't need temples." Even so, isolating all the best bits of religion is an interesting exercise. Ritual and ceremony are useful ways of giving structure to our moral commitments. And many see churches and cathedrals as valuable places of community gathering and sources of awe and edification. But all this has been tried before. The French revolution had its temples of reason and Felix Adler's godless sermon of 1874 inspired a whole movement for ethical societies. De Botton's project may well be a glorious flop in the making, but there is certainly space for a more creative conversation about the purpose of religion.